Hackers behind $41M Stake heist shifts BNB, MATIC in latest move: CertiK

The group of hackers involved in the $41 million theft from the cryptocurrency casino Stake has made another move. They recently transferred $328,000 worth of Polygon (MATIC) and BNB (BNB) tokens, according to CertiK, a blockchain security firm.

The most recent transfer consisted of 300 BNB tokens, valued at approximately $61,500. These tokens were sent to an external address, “0x695…,” and then bridged to the Avalanche blockchain on September 11 at 4:09 pm UTC. Additionally, 520,000 MATIC tokens, worth over $266,000, were moved to Avalanche seven hours earlier at 7:18 am UTC.

This recent transfer of 520,000 MATIC and 300 BNB adds to the $4.5 million that was already transferred to the Bitcoin blockchain on September 7. However, the total amount transferred represents just 1.2% of the $41 million stolen by the hackers.

The hackers gained access to the private keys of Stake’s Binance Smart Chain and Ethereum hot wallets on September 4. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has attributed this exploit to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

With the $41 million stolen from Stake, the total losses from cryptocurrency hacks and scams in 2023 now exceed $1 billion. CertiK previously reported that the total stood at $997 million at the end of August. However, several attacks in recent weeks have pushed the figure over the $1 billion mark.

Aside from the Stake exploit, there have been other noteworthy incidents. One involved a cryptocurrency whale losing $24 million in staked Ether (ETH) due to a phishing attack. Additionally, Vitalik Buterin’s X (formerly Twitter) account was compromised, resulting in a nonfungible token scam that netted the hacker $691,000. These incidents alone would raise CertiK’s August figure to at least $1.04 billion.

Among other recent incidents, the Pepe (PEPE) coin’s withdrawal incident cost investors $13.2 million, the Exactly Protocol exploit led to $7.3 million in losses, and an exposed security vulnerability on Balancer resulted in $2.1 million in damage.

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